Opinion: Large-scale, feature-rich implementations of XML forms from Adobe, IBM, and Microsoft might be an answer in search of a problem.At the PDF Conference in Washington, D.C. this week I walked the halls searching for an answer to this question: Now that IBM is getting into forms through two initiatives—acquiring PureEdge and a separate piece on the mobile side—how will the industry respond?
Granted, the forum was a PDF show, so soliciting opinions on forms built on technologies other than PDF would be akin to asking a gathering of Yankees fans if they think the Red Sox have a chance to win it all. Or, more aptly, asking them to gauge the Montreal Alouettes' chances of winning the Grey Cup.
Or so you would think. Yet, that's not the case, because many forms software vendors exhibiting at the show make their living by staying technology-agnostic and supporting whatever their customers use to build forms, be it HTML, XML, or the two flavors of PDF forms, AcroForms (built in Acrobat) and XML (LiveCycle Designer).
The free market governs the discussion. And the free market, apparently, hasn't really embraced XML forms yet, according to these experts.
"Better than 80 percent of the forms don't require [XML]. They need simple tools and simple ways to get the data [back] to them," says Chris Pieper, CEO of FormRouter, whose ASP service covers the back end of managing forms data for a subscription fee. He classifies HTML and AcroForms-type electronic forms as "business forms" and the more complex XML-driven forms as "IT-driven" forms.
"That doesn't take away from the other 20 percent that need database integration and logins," he continues, "but we need simple solutions that represent probably the bulk of the forms out there, and technology [that works for] an administrative executive or a marketing manager or somebody who couldn't [explain] an XML form or a CGI script if their life depended on it."
No love for InfoPath
Franklin Garner, president of Amgraf, goes so far as to say he feels that Adobe's purchase of Accelio and its release of the ensuing LiveCycle XML-based product line weren't necessarily undertaken to address a market need but instead to respond to Microsoft's InfoPath—a product that still hasn't caught on with much of anyone, including forms software developers like his company.
With LiveCycle, Garner feels Adobe was and still is "competing with a ghost": InfoPath's potential. Garner sees InfoPath as a product that might be good five years from now, but for which people today aren't ready.
"Ostensibly, InfoPath would rock the industry," Garner says of the hype behind InfoPath's 2003 release. "We could have devoted development resources and marketing resources to responding to how people were going to do things with InfoPath. But it hasn't really proven to be anything significant. That doesn't mean it's not going to be, but we have no reaction yet."
Tim Sullivan, of server application vendor ActivePDF, says very few, if any, of his customers have attempted to use InfoPath or the IBM mobile system. He believes IBM 's mobile forms solution probably won't cut into the PDF forms market but instead will be useful for large companies already working with IBM products like WebSphere and Domino. It might do well in certain niches, such as for warehousing and distribution at very large companies using RFID (radio-frequency identification) systems.
But if IBM builds something popular from technology recently acquired through PureEdge—or perhaps merges it with its mobile forms solution—one company will be ahead of the curve in the forms space: Formsoft Group.
Like many forms software vendors, Formsoft supports forms built in several different applications, including Acrobat. The company supported PureEdge back before it became IBM property, and it will continue to support it, along with the various flavors of PDF forms, says president Randy Popson.
"Our product already supports it," says Popson, who adds that it's too early to tell if one particular forms technology will win out. "IBM has great capability, Adobe has great capability, Microsoft has great capability. But capability doesn't mean it's going to turn out to be anything. Microsoft's never turned InfoPath into anything and they obviously have the power to do it if they wanted to."
This early in its life, IBM's mobile XML forms technology seems—seems—to be in the same boat as InfoPath and maybe even the LiveCycle applications: holding all kinds of potential because it can be scaled to enterprise size, but usable for only a few people because it requires experience in the back end infrastructure behind the form, as well as enough horse sense to build a form the end users can decipher and actually use.
AcroForms still popular
Which brings us back to AcroForms. It's simple. Take a static PDF and lay form fields on top of it. If you're not a graphic designer or an IT pro, the result might not be as aesthetically perfect as the Mona Lisa or as seamlessly integrated with everything else on the company network, but it will get the job done.
The average person—for example, the HR person who wants to take vacation requisitions online, or the accountant who wants to computerize purchase orders—doesn't want to get IT involved for one or two lousy forms. They don't want to lay out six-to-10 figures for enterprise-class software for forms creation and a back-end system to support the 25 people who will use the simple forms.
They just want to take a static PDF and plop some form fields on it with the information getting shot into a simple database somewhere, maybe even on their own desktop machine. They want to do this today, as opposed to a phased rollout fully operational in 24 months.
For these applications, PDF and HTML, basically, are the choices. PDF trumps HTML because some employees will, invariably, need to print out a form and fill it out by hand; HTML sometimes cuts off lines or makes inconvenient page breaks.
Who uses HTML to create forms? People who don't care about whether or not the file prints properly. Most of the time they do it in Macromedia Dreamweaver, Pieper says.
XML is coming
But, says PDF Sages owner and forms expert Leonard Rosenthol, XML forms are coming, and he's pretty sure they will be the standard. Adobe LiveCycle Designer comes free with the Windows version of Acrobat Pro, so people who create PDF forms won't be able to escape it for long.
"Part of the reason that people think AcroForms is better is from a current user/experience standpoint, and I agree with that," Rosenthol said, adding that when Adobe works the kinks out of the LiveCycle Designer user experience, the world will likely embrace forms in XML because in his eyes it's a much better technology. "From a technology standpoint, Designer forms are so way beyond old AcroForms. It's the right direction. All we have to do is fix Designer."
He believes, too, that form data input through HTML, Microsoft InfoPath, or something based on XForms—the standard used by IBM's current mobile forms scheme—will eventually end up in a PDF, anyway, because PDF is the one that government and enterprise have standardized upon. For good reasons, too, with readability and screen-to-paper fidelity being the most significant.
"Data entry is just data entry—who cares?" he says. "The important part that PDF brings to this puzzle—the only one that solves this problem—is what happens on the back end. You've got the data sitting around, you've got to print it out, you've got to submit it to a government organization or some other body, or to an archival system. What choice do you have? PDF, PDF, or PDF."
